Summer Goal Failures

Well, hey there! I think we can kick this post right off with the obvious failure of keeping tumbleweeds off of my blog. It appears that I haven’t posted in about two months, which is a new low for me. And it’s not that I haven’t had anything to say – trust me. But apparently I was busy failing on multiple levels, so it was an equal opportunity summer.

My kids go back to school tomorrow and so now seems like a great time to list the many things I set to do over the last 11 weeks and failed.

Organization on any and all levels. This included sub-goals like clearing out junk drawers, donating old clothes and toys, and general removal of the ever-growing pile of clutter that seems to spread overnight like Gremlins that get wet. But since I’m only now clearing out the crap that was sent home on the last day of school in June, I think we can all agree that this didn’t quite work out. I have been toying with the idea of reading The Life-Changing Art of Tidying Up but I think it would depress me. And, frankly, it seems a lot easier to just use the kerosene-meets-match approach on the playroom at this point.

Kids’ outings. Oh, the places we’ll go! Or not. The kids and I had made a list of fun outings we should take this summer, like the zoo, a pirate cruise, mini golf and the aquarium. 0 for 4, friends, 0 for 4. Shit. But we did hit the library once and even returned all seven items on time-ish.

Growing food of some kind. If I’m being honest with myself, this was never going to fucking happen, mostly because people as ignorant as I am about gardening didn’t think to begin this process before, say, July. Score one for the farmer’s market.

Composting. My husband totally thinks I’m joking about this, but how hard could it be? I feel like this slop/trough situation was kind of made for us. Still, it needs to be done correctly and I never followed through and OMG do you see a pattern here? Next year, I’m on it. Probably.

Writing more. See above. Total failure. I could not have written less. I can’t even use consistent verb tenses in this post. The most typing I did all summer was my marathon texting session last week on The Day of the Teacher and Classroom Assignments.

Read a new book. I have one sitting on my night stand called The Fringe Hours, which is all about making time for yourself. I haven’t opened it. Do you want to call the Irony Police, or should I?

And there you have it. My summer failures seem to be abundant. But, really, why did I expect to get shit done when my kids were home way more than they weren’t? That was naive on my part.

But do allow me to point out what I did accomplish, because it’s not insignificant.

• I expanded my summer wine roster by at least four new favorite bottles.

• I went to the brand new Whole Foods alone on a Friday night.

• I rediscovered, thanks to the miracle of Parental Amnesia, what it’s like to drag a headstrong (and gigantic) two year-old on all of my errands. Public tantrums: 20-40. And that was just me. He is a cross between an F5 tornado and a miniature rugby player. But at least I also built up my shoulders and arms in the process without hitting the gym.

• I got the hell out of Dodge. Seriously. After two years of having a baby physically attached to me, he finally weaned and I decided to take a few long overdue trips. A dear friend, a sister overseas, a blog conference and perhaps more than your average evenings at U2’s latest tour. I took each of my two older kids on individual outings to spend time alone with them, sans Rugby Toddler. As a family, we spent time at the ocean and time in hotel rooms during hurricane-like conditions, and lots of time in the car getting to and from our various destinations. I spent time packing and unpacking and repacking, and I’m not going to complain one single bit about that because I’m grateful for all we got to see and do.

Oh wait, maybe I didn’t fail after all. Maybe it’s ok that I didn’t get the house organized or the vegetables home-grown or the books read or the blog maintained. Maybe the zoo and the pirate cruise and all of those things don’t matter because we had way too much sand in our toes and far too many hot dogs and ice cream cones. Maybe summer isn’t about all of that pesky productivity, even if my mental and physical house feel like a mess right now on the eve of school starting.

I have all year to get everything together.

Surrrrrrely, that will happen.